


Toxic

by Innocent Culprit (JoJo)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-28
Updated: 2011-04-28
Packaged: 2017-10-18 18:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/192064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoJo/pseuds/Innocent%20Culprit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Bobby stand guard against an attack while a very sick Dean doesn't help one little bit</p>
            </blockquote>





	Toxic

**Author's Note:**

> written March 2010 to a request for poisoned Dean

It had been an untidy hunt.

The vibes had been bad all day, the weather had been bad all day, and the fact that what they’d been hunting across two and half states turned out to have multiplied by about six when they found it caused even the best-laid plans to go to crapola.

Bobby called time eventually, and they wound things up in a scramble suspecting the job was only half done. They were mad, sore, tired and worse. Much worse. The three of them left the Holland Hill burial mounds faintly smoking twenty miles behind. They unloaded themselves into the nearest motel they could find. It was sprawled back off the highway, slap dab next to a bar and with the lights of an unknown town just visible up the road.

“Get some rest,” Bobby instructed and Dean, already feeling out of sorts, gave him a little, bitty narrow-eyed look, not appreciating Bobby as surrogate Dad. Sam understood that Bobby didn’t ever pitch for that, but Dean only felt one of his resentful, guilt-encrusted pangs about the loss of the real thing.

Turned out they were all too wrecked to do anything but drop the bags and sleep.

Sam was out of it until eight the next morning, flat on his back, fully-clothed on top of the bedcovers, having just lain back to consider the yellowing ceiling and mutter “Shit... _untidy_...” before he’d abruptly fallen asleep. Dean had undressed and hunkered down but he found that during all the hours Sam breathed in and out in rhythmic peace in the other bed, his own eyes wouldn’t close properly. Sprinkles of too-bright color flashed under his lids, hurting his eyeballs, and he could feel his pulse beating in odd places.

Like the back of his throat and under his fingernails.

Dean knew that was all kinds of wrong, but the untidiness bothered him, too, and he figured he was maybe reacting to it. He got up and showered after a while. Went outside, saw Bobby walking into town, hands in pockets, so he went back into the room and watched Sam. That felt good, at least. It always helped to see Sammy deep-breathing, coming up slowly into a sheltered, refreshing place.

Sam had been awesome last night, Dean reflected, and could take credit for whatever good had come out of the whole expedition - if Dean felt like giving it to him, that was. He had this knee-jerk thing about keeping his little brother squashed -- he’d always figured if he didn’t, the little geek would just take over the whole shooting match. At the same time though, he knew confidence in hunting was hard-won for Sam, while for himself it was like something that got painted on accidentally when he was still in the workshop.

Dean folded himself gingerly into a chair, rubbed his tender midriff, and sat there waiting for Sam to wake up, wondering what the hell he was going to tell him when he did.

*

Sam, predictably, felt like crap when he woke up. Deep sleep never agreed with him, especially when it wasn’t enough and he’d dropped into it before taking off his boots. The boots were removed, mind, laying neatly sideways on the floor. Like always.

“We moving on straight away?” he asked the rounded shape of the Boot Fairy’s shoulders sitting on the end of the opposite bed.

“You can have breakfast,” Dean said, making a half turn.

“Gee thanks. Bobby around?”

“He’s around.”

Sam got to his feet and padded to the bathroom. Wet towel on the floor. Wet floor.

 _‘Preciate it, Dean._

Up the road in town they found Bobby sucking up coffee. Dean played with some bacon and Sam ate pancakes and felt better.

“Gonna leave you here, boys,” Bobby said before he got up and left. “I have things to do, you maybe need to lay low for a while.” He sucked more coffee. Sam nodded around his fork while Dean cleared his throat with an ugly sound.

“You didn’t sleep,” Sam said in an accusatory voice on the way back to the motel.

Dean scratched under his chin with the back of his fingers. One, two, three scratches. Enough to buy him time for an answer.

“I’ll sleep when we’ve put a few hundred miles on the clock,” he said eventually. “Last night was a fuck-up.”

“Okay,” Sam said. He knew he’d done good. Very good. But Dean, wouldn’t you just know it, Dean was going to pretend he hadn’t noticed.

It had to be that he was jealous. Didn’t like coming out of the hunt empty-handed and with no battle-scars. Didn’t like it that little brother had done most of the whumping, and saved Bobby’s neck to boot.

Dean didn’t like it.

Jealous!

 _Ha!_

“You pack, I’ll settle up,” Dean said at the door.

'Settle up' could be a euphemism for abscond, so Sam threw all Dean’s stuff in his pack, and then sorted his own, quickly, but careful. He was in the car when Dean came out of the office, dangling the Impala keys off one finger, his face looking unlived-in. Sam braced for either silence or bitching.

Dean took a while settling. Kept shuffling like there were springs sticking in his butt. Kept it up for the first twenty miles.

“Did you mean it?” Sam asked him. “Few hundred miles? In what direction, Dean? Where we going?”

“Where are we ever going?”

“That place. You know, marked on the map. Trouble.”

“Well, let’s not do that today.”

But I did good, thought Sam.

“We never not do that,” he said.

“What, and you don’t feel like a change of pace?”

“Tell me why.”

“You look bushed.”

“Fuck,” Sam said with feeling. “That’s not a reason. That just how it is.”

“Well okay, Samantha. We’ll drive a few hundred miles because that’s just how it is.”

“You know what, Dean, sometimes you really bum me out,” Sam said, knocking the side of his head on the window, disappointed. He glanced over in time to get a glimpse of Dean who was swallowing like he had a lump of uncooked dough in his throat, rotating his head around on top of his spine.

They made a first stop after three hours.

Sam was floating by then, rendered helpless by the effort of zoning out the track that Dean insisted on playing over and over, slapping Sam’s hand away hard when he tried to reach out and kill it.

OCD Dean. A baaaaad way to start a drive. They bought gas and Sam went in the washroom and came out to try and coax some candy from a machine. Dean seemed to be thinking. He was sitting very straight in the driver’s seat, one arm locked rigid on the wheel, staring at a point somewhere ahead of him that Sam couldn’t quite fix.

“You need to eat properly, Sam,” he said thoughtfully when his brother got in and began unwrapping the candy. He shook his head when Sam offered him half.

“Need me to drive?” Sam asked.

Dean did the head roll again, a cautious one. “Later.”

“You didn’t sleep,” Sam accused again.

“Sure I did.”

“Sure you did. So where’d the panda eyes come from, huh?”

Dean opened his mouth and hacked out a laugh. Sam caught an incongruous sparkle in his brother’s eye, and then thought he saw it snap off like a switch had been flipped. The car slithered on to the highway with an uncharacteristic lurch, like Dean had fumbled the wheel just for a second. Then all became smooth.

Sam finished the candy.

“That was really gross,” he said in satisfaction, but Dean was concentrating so hard on the road ahead he didn’t even react. For about another forty-five minutes he drove like that, arms locked, eyes wide open and unblinking.

“Ohhh... kay,” he suddenly said. “You can drive.”

“I beg your... I... what?”

Dean broke out of his pose. “Dude, I swear, you are impressive. You have this way with words, this way that you just can’t get outside of a college education.”

He slewed them to a halt on the side of the road. Sam got out, half expecting the Impala to suddenly roar away and disappear out of sight round the corner. Dean hadn’t done that trick for a while. Instead, though, his brother inched himself over into the other seat while the engine was running.

Sam climbed behind the wheel. In the passenger seat, Dean closed his eyes one at a time, then clasped his left hand inside his right and pushed them down into his lap. Sam wasn’t sure if he was sleeping, or listening. There was every reason for him to be asleep instantly, yet something about his posture niggled Sam fiercely. He himself was glad to be driving. It was quiet, the road was interesting, and he amused himself trying to follow the Impala’s engine sounds the way he knew Dean did. Finally, after a half hour of twisty turns, Dean’s eyes flew open. After staring forward through the windshield as if trying to work out where he was, he said,

“Could you stop for me, Sam?”

Weirdly polite. Weirdly calm and polite.

“Sure, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter,” Dean said as the car rolled to a halt. He had the door open before it was at a complete standstill and tipped himself out. Sam watched how upright he was, until he got to the nearest tree. He reached out a hand, missed, jammed his shoulder into the trunk and projectile-vomited sideways into the bushes.

“Whoa!” Sam’s surprise was tinged with awe at the powerful splat of stomach contents against foliage.

He supposed that lack of sleep and a series of hair-pin bends might bring on a touch of car-sickness, but he wondered what the hell-all Dean could possibly be upchucking. Two mouthfuls of bacon sure didn’t amount to a whole hurl.

Dean stood up straight, upright once more, getting himself together, one hand flapping backwards in Sam’s direction to let him know he was not in need of assistance. But instead of turning round, he suddenly took a few more tottering steps in another direction. Then he was reaching for a support again. Sam could hear the sound of muscles in spasm, the peculiarly horrifying sound of Dean’s stomach in a losing battle with something that so wasn’t breakfast. By the time he was out of the car, Dean had folded down a level, his knees meeting the forest floor. He was heading further down when Sam got one hand under his armpit and the other on the back of his jacket.

“Okay, what is this?” Sam knew his brusque tone was worry. He had to do brusque, else it’d be something else. Something unhelpful, like panic.

Dean pulled his arm away. He slammed both hands on the ground and puked again. Sam shifted his feet out of the way just in time. And it wasn’t coffee either. It wasn’t water, or bile, or anything digested or undigested that Sam could see. It was a thick mix of silt and lumps, black as night, and it looked as if it was hell to get up. Sam knew for sure it wasn’t anything Dean had put into his stomach voluntarily. The retching didn’t sound like Dean, either.

“What the hell, Bobby?” Sam shouted into his cell, his attempt at brusque now completely poleaxed by the panic. “What the hell is this?”

Dean was perched on the side of the passenger seat by then with his head between his knees, hacking to clear his throat.

“Jesus, Sam, did he take a hit last night?”

All Sam knew was that Bobby’s voice sounded too far away.

“I didn’t think so.” He paced along the opposite side of the car, keeping Dean’s head in sight. “I didn’t see it. Do you know what this is?”

“He... I don’t know...”

“I’m taking him to the nearest hospital,” Sam said, “Right now. I don’t care how many cops there are. Right now, Bobby.”

“No you’re not. It won’t do any good. They can’t treat this.”

“They can’t treat what? What is this?”

“Nothing good, Sam. You’ve got to get your brother off the road as soon as you can, you hear me? He’s got something nasty in his system. Something... maybe.”

“Poison?” Sam asked in disgust, his mind cantering away from the starting line before the gun. “What the hell’s poisoned him? One of those spirits?”

“Just keep him warm, Sam.”

“Bobby!” Sam barked down the phone, making Dean attempt to lift his head and say something. “He’s already turning inside out! Can’t you do anything?”

“Get off the road, Sam.” Bobby’s voice held that calm finality in the face of a hopeless cause that reminded Sam of his father. “Call me. I’ll come to you.”

Snapping shut the phone, Sam stomped around the car and dropped to his haunches.

“Where’d you get hit, Dean? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Huh?” Dean’s head lolled up, his eyes squeezing out faintly muddy tears of effort. The wet sat on his cheekbones. “I’m not hit.”

“Bobby thinks you are.”

Dean scrubbed the back of a fist across his mouth. He looked at the streak of dark that was left there and wiped it crossly down the leg of his jeans.

“Sit in the car,” Sam ordered him, “we can’t stay here. You cold?”

Dean frowned in puzzlement. “Hot,” he said. “Really, really hot.”

“Bobby said to keep warm.”

“Forget it,” Dean said, beginning to paw at his shirt. “I’m burning up here, seriously.”

“You don’t look hot. You look cold.”

“Yeah, whatever, I’m fine, it’ll pass.”

Even knowing Dean as well as he did, Sam was so thrown by Dean’s certainty in the face of such blinding wrongness, that he couldn’t speak for several thumping heartbeats. “I don’t think so, dude,” he got out eventually. “I think you’re only just beginning. Would you just get in the car already?”

“So I’m cold,” Dean said, fretful all of a sudden.

Sam peeled off his own jacket. He jerked the passenger door open as wide as it would go, shoved Dean’s feet inside and threw the jacket over him. Then he slammed the door. As he got in driver’s side Dean’s head dropped back.

Sam began to babble questions as he revved up the engine.

“Damnit, Dean, why d’you never tell me these things? How long’ve you felt bad? Why won’t you let me... Dean? You all right?”

Dean’s head rolled towards him. His expression was a familiar one. “Pie-hole,” he said in an ominous tone of voice. “Shut it.”

*

It was raining by the time they got to the Morningside Motel, a long, low structure with a yellow neon sign and gravel for a car lot. Sam insisted on the ground-floor room furthest from the office and had to argue for it. Dean was leaning on the door when he got there, head bowed, shrunk inside Sam’s jacket.

“How you doing?” Sam asked when they got inside.

“I am doing pissed,” Dean said, letting the jacket fall to the floor. “I am going to have a shower because I am cold and pissed.”

“What are you pissed about?” Sam asked.

“Because I am cold.” He enunciated each word carefully.

The shower hissed and steamed behind the door for what seemed like an age. Sam called Bobby, didn’t like what he said, and then sat at the table with his laptop open, looking up spirits and poison and finding nothing he wanted. Nervous, he got up and rooted through Dean’s bag to find some track pants and a sweatshirt, clean socks, two pairs. When Dean came out the bathroom, hair spiked, he gave Sam a suspicious look.

“What?”

“You find where they got you?”

Dean dropped the towel and held his arms out in a crucifix pose. “Help yourself.”

Sam figured that the fact that Dean was letting him near meant that he was worried. He flipped on the light overhead and searched the familiar skin from the feet upwards. Wherever he touched felt ice cold. There was some standard bruising and scrapes but nothing that looked like a wound. Dean’s back was faintly scarred, knotty with muscle, smooth. Sam’s long fingers probed over the shoulders, round the neck, back down the arms, round the ribcage. All the time Dean stood still, uncharacteristically patient. Sam came up round the collarbones and froze.

“You see something?” Dean peered down at himself.

“I dunno. It’s... “ Sam squinted. There was a tiny, perfectly round bruise, midnight blue with a pinprick of black in the center, and it was just over Dean’s heart. He pressed one finger against it lightly.

There was the slightest buckle in Dean’s knees and Sam’s hand came out instinctively to stop the fall.

“Jesus, dude,” Dean snapped, “no need to dig your fingernails in me.”

“I hardly touched you!”

“Right.” Dean stepped back, throwing the neat pile of clothes a baleful glare.

Sam let go just enough emotion. “Just put ‘em on for crying out loud will you? Help me out here. I got nothing, Dean. Nothing but what Bobby said. And what Bobby said was that you should keep warm.”

“Okay, okay,” Dean said. “Don’t wet your panties. I will snuggle.”

Sam felt Dean’s forehead, his hands, feet, the skin on his chest, his neck, his belly. So cold it nearly hurt to touch. But Dean didn’t shiver. His teeth didn’t clack. He just looked at Sam, pupils huge and black. He put on the clothes, got into the bed, let Sam heap blankets around him and lay on his side, stiffly curled, eyes open. All he did after a while was let out one sound, as if something sharp had dug into him, and then lines of pain furrowed right across his brow and stayed there.

“Okay, man, I need you to tell me,” Sam said.

“Tell you what for crap’s sake?” Dean huffed through clenched teeth.

“What... what’s hurting... what I can do.”

“I got a heartbeat, dude.”

“”Kay, good start.”

“Noooo,” Dean said, “In my hand.” He opened the fingers of one fisted hand and splayed them. “Beating here, right in the palm of my fucking hand.”

“What are you talking about?” Sam asked. It was the first of many, many times he was going to say that.

Dean was staring seemingly mesmerized at his hand, then he closed the fingers back into a fist, shut his eyes tight and began slow breathing, like he was working on a panic attack. Sam watched as muscles all over Dean’s neck and shoulders began to tighten up, stretching taut.

“Sam ... this isn’t good,” Dean whispered, eyes still closed.

“I can see,” Sam said, getting down next to the bed and running a hand over the top of his head, just the slightest of brushes like he’d seen Dad do, like he’d felt Dad do for him. Dean, funny enough, didn’t do brushes. Despite all his crap, when Sam was in pain Dean would stroke right through his hair, warm and rhythmic, unafraid of the contact.

Dean opened his hand again weakly, presented the palm. Sam touched down on it because he thought that was what his brother wanted, and nearly recoiled. He could feel a pulse crashing in syncopated beats under the dry, cold skin.

Unnatural.

Super-unnatural.

“Um, Dean?” he wanted to say, “Dean, is there something in there with you?”

*

Bobby arrived four hours later.

Sam swung open the door of room 14 and as far as Bobby was concerned Winchester Junior looked off the scale.

“”m here,” Bobby said, stepping inside. “Where’s your brother?”

He flashed a glance around the rust-red coloring of the room, felt his throat tighten with the strange, caustic smell.

Dean was visible through the bathroom door. He seemed to have been draped over the toilet bowl and a mound of blankets was wrapped round him. As Bobby got closer he could see he was clinging on. His forehead was laid on the front of the bowl and his hands were bloodless from the grip he had on the back. Splashed around the limits of the pan were globules of black, like crude oil, opaque and solid-looking.

“Jesus,” Bobby said. “What the hell’s been going on in here?”

Sam slipped past him into the bathroom and ducked down next to Dean in a small space by the bath-tub. Evidently this was where he had spent much of the last few hours.

“Can’t move him,” he said, his voice pinched to the point that Bobby knew he was riding some serious panic. “He’s been so sick.” He reached around the bowed head and swiped a hand across Dean’s forehead, fingers tapping none too gently. “Hey, hey, Dean, Bobby’s here.” His voice was pitched low and urgent, like he’d been having trouble getting through.

“Anything else?” Bobby demanded, knowing this was already enough, way already enough.

“Uh... he was talking a lot of weird crap.”

“More than usual?”

Sam’s can’t-cope-with-this frown dipped over his eyes, like he couldn’t tap into whether Bobby was trying to lighten the mood.

“Not funny crap, Bobby. Weird crap. Is he possessed? Is that what this is?”

“Not exactly, I don’t think so.”

“Bobby! Help me out here... look at him. We have to do something.”

On the floor Dean had just let out a very tired, “Sam... “

“Yuh... here, Dean,” Sam said. “How’re you doing?”

“Bobby?” Dean croaked.

“I’m here, son,” Bobby said.

“Gemme up... freakin tireda sitting on my ass.”

Sam sent a world-weary look Bobby’s way.

“So what’s this all about then?” Bobby moved to help get Dean up off the floor. He was relieved Dean made an effort to take some of his own weight, but didn’t like the way he couldn’t seem to get his chin off his chest. Over on the bed he sat with shoulders curled and head on one hand like he had toothache. Bobby squatted in front of him, tapped him on the knee. “What mess you got yourself into now?”

“Dunno.”

“Sam says you got spiked by something.”

Dean shrugged lop-sidedly. “Uh-yuh.”

“And it’s making you sick.”

“Think?”

“I’ve seen this before,” Bobby said and Sam perked up at once. “Long time ago. You say you have something like a ... like a little puncture wound?”

“Yes,” Sam said as Dean waved at him to take over the talking. “Looks like nothing. Tell us, Bobby. What are we dealing with here?”

“Oh one of those spirits spiked him all right. Left a calling card.”

“What does that mean?”

Bobby took a jittery turn around the room, peering out the window, poking at the supplies that were piled on a table. “Like a beacon.”

“Beacon?” Sam was half distracted by his brother’s new set of movements.

“Bacon,” Dean said feebly. He scrubbed at the back of his head in irritation. “Fuck, that came straight out of the wall.”

Bobby hiked a brow at Sam, spoke soothingly. “What you got, Dean?”

Dean slapped himself hard. “’sbiting my freakin’ brain.”

“What do you mean?” Sam repeated, following Bobby into a corner. His eyes stayed trained on Dean, who was patting angrily at his skull.

“It’s like some kind of marker,” Bobby said, “that’s all I know. Long as Dean has it, and the poison in him, he’ll attract ... activity.”

Sam took two deep breaths. “Fine,” he said, “How do we get rid of this... marker? How do we help him?”

Bobby looked uneasy. “It’s more or less shit.”

“Great. All right. Just... tell me.”

“Hafta let it run its course. Mark fades, signal gets weaker. And if we can’t stand it anymore, we could try and burn it out.” Bobby spread his hands. He didn’t want the responsibility of this, even more didn’t want Sam to have it. “Not easy. You have to go deep.”

Sam couldn’t say anything. He just fisted his hands.

“That all?” he said at last, dry.

“Mmmm.”

“I can’t do that! Bobby, for fuck’s sake ... neither of us can do that.”

“Which is why we’re going to sit tight.”

“How long?”

Bobby shrugged. He’d heard tales of how long this could take, didn’t want to freak the kid out even more. “Think we can hold it together?”

Sam had wandered back towards Dean, and now sat next to him on the bed, snagging the hand that was so angry, placing it in Dean’s lap and holding it there.

“And we’d better shore up our defences, boy. Because whatever’s out there can surely smell us.”

Sam rose again to go for the salt that Bobby had rooted out of one of the bags. But as he got to standing Bobby saw one of Dean’s hands claw round the back of Sam’s leg. Sam only half managed to twist around before his brother threw himself overboard, launching from the bed and hitting the floor with a smack.

“What the hell are you doing?” Sam bellowed at him. Even Bobby wasn’t sure if Dean had thrown himself or been thrown.

Now he lay sprawled on the floor between the beds. He was all tight ribs and braced muscles, as if something was trying to bring itself up, something buried impossibly deep. The force was lifting his upper torso off the grubby carpet and from the back of his throat ground something that sounded like an engine filled with rocks. Whatever it was, Dean didn’t want the trouble of getting it out.

Bobby spun on the spot to locate the nearest receptacle.

“Hey, now come on, take it easy,” Sam commanded, plumping down on his knees, grappling to find a hand-hold somewhere on his brother’s flailing arms, “What the hell’s .... Jesus, Dean, you need to breathe too ... and come on, listen to me, Dean, you need to calm down and not fight it ...”

Bobby winced at the advice. He knew, of course, that Dean Winchester had no other setting and that he’d probably try and fight the thing until it choked him.

When Sam got a hold, the kind of hold you get on a drowning man, Dean reacted at once. His left elbow made one jarring contact with jawbone, and sent Sam back on his ass. Then his back arched up like a cat and he discharged the whole thing in a long series of rattles, spraying the surrounding area in a fine mist of inky black. Bobby’s receptacle didn’t do much good. Maybe saved some of the carpet.

The smell was bitter. Chemical.

Sam had lunged into his brother again, had his eyes closed, clinging on.

“Hold it together?” he groaned as Dean went from rigid to relaxed and back again in his arms.

“Sam,” Bobby said. He backed away from the door, stood right over them. “You’re going to bust a gut. Not to mention Dean’s ribs.”

Sam popped open his eyes. The jerking had almost stopped. Slowly he loosened his grip. Dean, still panting, was trying to extricate himself. “OK, OK, you can go.” Sam crawled off to one side, extended an arm up towards Bobby.

Dean dragged himself the other way to the bed and sat on the floor with his back against it and his head dropped forward, clearing his throat feebly. The black stuff was all over his jeans. He wiped each hand in turn down his upper arms.

“Just sit still,” Sam told him. “You want some water?”

“Sam ...” Dean couldn’t get his head up again.

“Dude, I know. That sucked in a really major way. Now sit there and be quiet. Please.”

“Sam...” A definite growl.

“Yeah.”

Dean still couldn’t get his head up. “Check the TV. And check the basement. And then check in the mirrors.”

“We’re in one room, Dean. There’s no basement. What are you talking about?”

“Hanging upside down,” Dean mumbled. “And then the storm’ll get in. All the blood’s run out.”

Sam got back down on the floor beside him. “Hey,” he said, “Come on, man, you’re not making any sense. Dean ... Dean, can you hear me?” He shifted on to his butt, pulled Dean close.

“Feel sick, Sammy.”

“Oh, crap, here we go again. OK, I got you. Want us to get you to the bathroom?”

“Nah... just...” Dean’s hand waved around in space and then latched on to Sam’s shirt, nearly pulling it from his shoulder. “Make it stop, Sam.”

Something heavy banged against the door from outside.

*

When it all became too much, Dean fell asleep. It wasn’t quite like sleep, though. More like a boneless stupor in which his eyes were not quite closed, unmoving and vacant under his lids. He checked out abruptly, still slouched on the floor by the bed, listed into Sam’s chest. He hadn’t thrown up for a while, but he’d been mumbling that his eyes felt cold.

They lifted him on to the bed. He looked totally wasted but he was lying still, his chest rising and falling evenly.

“Just tell me where you saw this before, Bobby,” Sam demanded, his voice low. “And tell me what happened.”

Bobby chewed down on his bottom lip for five seconds. “Never saw it, just heard about it. Hunter on the trail of a host.”

“Host?”

“Yeah, you know ... host ... whole buncha spirits, running together in a pack ... just like Holland Hill. You get yourself spiked by one, they leave a mark, just tiny. Damn thing’ll make you sicker than a sick dog, puking up black crap, cold as almighty fuck. Host gets drawn in like the mark’s sending off a signal. They come back to get whatever it was that ganked their own.”

Sam stared over at the bed. Dean was unmoving and they could hear his breathing. Even, maybe a little too fast.

“What happened to that hunter?”

Shit, Sam could guess what happened. Still needed to hear it, though.

“They caught up with him,” Bobby conceded. “But, you know, Sam, that poor sonofabitch didn’t have any back-up. Was too sick to defend himself. Your brother’s got us.”

“Bobby, Dean didn’t kill anything last night, didn’t you know? I took out at least three. Shouldn’t it be me they’re coming for?”

“Hell, I don’t know what happened. Dean must have just been in the wrong place, near enough to spike. You’re not carrying the mark and he is.” Bobby gave an uncomfortable shrug. “If you were to jump ship and leave Dean to it, I don’t think they’d come after you.”

“Like I would do that. Jesus, Bobby.”

“Just sayin’. Could see you deciding to draw them off, some knuckle-headed scheme like that. It won’t work, Sam. We have to stay here and keep ‘em at bay, ride this goddamn thing out with him.”

“He’s so damn cold. Why isn’t he shivering?”

“That’s not normal cold, Sam.”

“Crap,” Sam said.

The lights crackled and Sam felt his cell vibrate in his jeans pocket. Stupid damn thing. Always picked up activity.

They looked to the bed just as Dean rolled over and sat bolt upright.

Sam had never seen him look so ashen. A stomach-churning bloodless gray. And he was holding his arms stiffly crossed against his chest, fists pressed together. His eyes had the bright, off-center stare of fever.

“Hey,” Sam said cautiously. He made it to the bed, sat down and clapped a hand to Dean’s forehead. It was slippery and wet. Cold, like he was sweating ice water. “Tell me what’s going on, dude. You with us? You with us, Dean?” Dean huffed, tightened the grip he had on himself.

Across the room, Bobby brought the shotgun up to his shoulder, sidled towards the door. It was moving as if buffeted by a stiff breeze.

The TV snapped on. The bathroom light hummed, flickered, stayed on.

“If they get through this door, we’re going to have to let loose with all barrels and then we’ll be behind bars before we know it and they’ll have your brother in the hospital. That’s not how we need this fuckin’ night to end, Sam.”

Reluctantly, Sam left Dean where he was.

The bathroom light went very bright suddenly, spilling harsh white into the main room. It flickered again, the crackle of electricity loud. Then it went off.

“They’re out there, all right.” Bobby didn’t stop aiming at the door, although his gaze kept moving to the windows and back. “And they want to get in.”

Dean was tipping his head to the side like his ears were full of water. “All that dark stuff,” he said clearly.

“What?” Sam span back toward him. “What’re you talking about?”

“At the bottom of the ocean,” Dean said and held his forefingers to his ears. “Floats down off the roof and then wheels.”

“Wheels?”

“Pretty sure.”

Sam felt his forehead bunch.

“Don’t think there’s much point you trying to follow him, Sam. And we need flashlights, we’re about to -”

The main overhead light popped like the bulb had blown. The lamp on the nightstand followed.

“Can we open the door?” Dean asked from the dark. “I’d really like to open the door.”

“Not a good idea. Stay where you are.”

Sam charted a course for what he thought was the table where the flashlights were. He fell over Dean’s legs as he went, sent them both to the floor with a crash. The body underneath him was chilled.

“Damnit!” Bobby didn’t sound amused. He’d gotten hold of one of the flashlights, positioned it on the table so it cast its beam straight at the door.

Sam left Dean lying there and crawled to the last bag of salt they had. He bit the corner off it, jammed his shotgun under one armpit, and began winding a line of white across the floor about two feet behind the first one. He heard Dean’s feet on the carpet.

“I’d rather be out there. Like, really. Much rather be out there.”

Sam body-checked him. “No, you’re not going anywhere.”

Dean puffed in annoyance.

“Get him back, Sam, get him away from the damn door.”

Sam dumped the nearly-empty bag of salt, didn’t let the shotgun fall. “Come on, dude. Back to bed.”

“Don’t back to bed me.”

“Sam!”

“All right, all right! Crap’s sake, Bobby, all right!”

Dean took one more step, bare foot touching down on the wavering white line.

Damn. Sam hated these kinds of tussles. He hated pitting himself against Dean, was too afraid he’d win, or that Dean would.

In the end it was mid-way between a shoulder-charge and a fireman’s carry. Sam was vaguely aware that Bobby had darted forward to retrieve the bag of salt.

When he was pitched backwards on to the bed so hard the pillows bounced off, Dean moaned. The air whooshed out of his lungs as he clutched both fists to his stomach.

Sam piled the blankets up around him again without finesse. “You’re all right, Dean. We got you.”

“Not fair,” Dean moaned. “Not fair.”

*

By three am the door was still rattling. The determination of whatever was outside made the atmosphere feel charged, gave Sam an almighty headache. Cracks had started to appear in the walls and several chunks of plaster had dropped from the ceiling. Close to the door the carpet had begun peeling itself up from the floor. All the pipes in the bathroom were clanking.

Sam and Bobby heaved a stand-alone closet across the door which Dean had watched in woozy fascination.

For a few hours he’d mostly been quietly clawing his way south through the mattress. Nothing but isolated huffs of pain, each one vicious, the source unseen. Still freezing cold to touch and coughing up crap.

The mark was fading. It was one hell of a battle to get Dean’s shirt off enough to actually see, but, sure enough, the blue was fainter, the pin-prick center less easy to distinguish.

Dean fell into a period of partial lucidity. Seemed confused as to why Sam was undressing him though.

“This tequila, Sammy? I do anything stupid? Jesus, will you get the fuck off me ... I can do this ... why’d I have to do this?”

“You’re doing fine, Dean. Hey, Bobby. Look at this. This is good, right?”

Dean sat obedient, brow furrowed, swaying slightly while Bobby examined him in the cool beam of the flashlight. “Think it must be. How’d you feel, Dean?”

“Hot.”

“Yeah?”

Sam put his hand up, nearly jumped in surprise when Dean leaned his forehead right into it. “Shit, he’s no warmer, Bobby.”

“No warmer, Bobby,” Dean echoed. “Just hot. Just fuckin’ hot.”

Then he was throwing himself around once more. Off the side of the bed, blankets flying. He began a painstaking crawl in the direction of the door before the cramps hit again, dropping him on to his side with a crunch. They blew through like a great wave, folding him up, knees to chin.

Sam didn’t want to let go of his gun. But he needed Dean not to be rolling around on the floor in agony by himself.

Too much. It was too fucking much.

Bobby was rooting in his duffel, had pulled out something. It caught Sam’s attention right away.

“What the hell is that?” Sam had the terrifying thought that he was going to end up having to fight Dean, Bobby and a host of spirits all at the same time. Bobby was grasping something in his hand that looked like the element from an electric kettle.

“You know what it is,” Bobby growled back. “It’s an option, Sam. If he can’t stand it anymore. If we can’t fucking stand it.”

A faintly hysterical laugh bubbled out of Sam. “You’re not getting a freakin’ soldering iron anywhere near him, Bobby! For fuck’s sake!”

“You’d have to do it.”

“What?”

“I’d hold him,” Bobby said through his teeth. “You’d have to do it. Burn the mark out, Sam. It’d take ten seconds maybe. Ten seconds and it’d all be over. He’d survive it, Sam. But if they get through that door ....”

“No way.”

The glass in the window frames was juddering. Puffs of air blew at the drapes, caught the edge of the salt line and scattered a trail of grains across the floor.

“Ten seconds,” Bobby said.

Dean banged his head against the floor. Made that sound again, like he was being jabbed in the guts with a pike. And then again.

There was a tingle of electricity. The bathroom light came on.

And stayed on.

Bobby froze where he was. After a few seconds he toed at the salt line. He stood for a while still facing the door, shotgun poised, kettle element swinging slowly on its flex. Sam moved his gaze from the bathroom to the TV to the windows. Then back to the mess of Dean on the floor. Bobby gradually lowered the gun, circled his shoulders gingerly.

“All quiet,” he said. “Think it’s all quiet.”

Sam got to his knees, let his own gun slip to the floor. He pulled a corner of Dean’s sodden shirt back.

“Can hardly see it now, Bobby. Nearly gone.”

Bobby said nothing. Just circled his shoulders again.

Sam touched the backs of his fingers to Dean’s neck, then his cheek. And hissed.

“Damnit, Dean. You have got to be kidding me.”

“Sam?”

“Fucking burning up here... Jesus. Through the roof, Bobby.”

Bobby made a face, approaching slowly as if all his bones were locked.

“I never heard of that. It was always cold.”

Sam shook his head weakly. “Think it’s okay. It’s just ... Dean,” he said, somehow getting his brother’s shoulders off the floor, heaving him into his chest and locking one arm around him. “He does this, the stupid jerk. Drives me crazy.”

Carefully he laid a palm across Dean’s forehead, held it in place, grateful for the heat.

Thermometers, wash-cloths, ice-baths and meds.

Hallefuckinlujah.

He looked up at Bobby, who blinked at him, nodded.

Yeah. Fever they could do.

*

Dean’s first conscious thought was that he’d moved his hand.

He was aware that nothing else was moving. That he’d moved nothing else for a long time.

Something about the light pressing on his eyelids told him it was morning. Which morning he wasn’t at all sure. He could hear breathing. And it wasn’t his own.

Dean moved the hand again, felt himself take a feeble grip of the edge of a sheet. It was nearly impossible to move. He was just about aware that he was lying on his back in a bed, and that his whole body felt like the bones had been sucked out. Like he was a pile of useless slop.

Crap.

“It’s OK, dude. Really.”

The bed dipped.

Not OK. Not anything like OK. He couldn’t move for crap’s sake.

“Really, Dean.”

Somebody tapped his cheek, made him try and open his eyes.

He lifted his head a little off the pillow. It felt unbearably heavy and his eyes were gritty like he’d had sand kicked in them. For a good few seconds the room wouldn’t stop rotating at its grim, stately pace. Bobby was sitting up in a chair opposite. He looked wiped out, like he hadn’t slept in a week.

There was bedding strewn around the room. Clothes. Open duffels and guns. Salt everywhere. Like, everywhere. And dark, kind of creepy-looking stains on the floor. There was a big wooden closet across the doorway. Seriously.

What the hell?

His stomach hurt like he’d been doing crunches for the last fuck knew how many hours and he was uncomfortably damp, like he’d had a fever. Just under his collarbone something ached. Like a freaking insect bite.

Dean tried to sort out his thoughts.

Sam had done great on that hunt. Bobby was still here, although Bobby left. What in the hell happened to breakfast? Shit. And the room. The room was a fucking mess.

“Untidy, dude,” he said. As his eyes slipped closed, he felt a firm hand stroke right through his hair.

Sam’s fingertips moved gently against his skull.

And that felt nice.


End file.
